RUONCAMPUS MAGAZINE FINAL Version

Influencer Marketing 101
By Kinneret Fux
What is influencer marketing?
Why is influencer marketing successful?
Influencer marketing is a digital marketing strategy
that is quickly sweeping the marketing industry. Influencer
marketing involves using prominent social media
profiles over social media platforms to promote a product
or a service. Influencers can range from personal profiles,
to business, to fan page accounts. Popular social media
profiles include profiles with “followers” from 1K to over
100M. The top trending social media platforms are Facebook,
Instagram, and Youtube.
How does influencer marketing work?
Influencer marketing allows brands to target subgroups
and mainstream communities alike. Using influencers,
a brand can saturate the feed of the desired targeted
demographic through a strategic use of prominent
social media profiles and strategic post schedules.
The audience of each influencer gets exposed to
the promoted product over the audience’s daily social
media intake. Through consecutive and ongoing posts
about the promoted product, the desired target consumer
receives repeated product awareness. The repeated posts
in the desired community through an influencer creates
a relationship in the consumer’s mind with the product
and the influencer. If the consumer values the opinions of
the influencer, the consumer will have a higher chance of
purchasing the product.
Influencer marketing is the modern day word-of-mouth.
According to Forbes, 84% of millennial purchasing
decisions are likely to be influenced by user generated
content created by strangers. Influencer marketing allows
consumers to relate to brands through social media
profiles the audience chooses to follow. By associating
brands with people, brands are recruiting new customers
through an influencer’s platform. This allows brands to
retain long term partnerships and endorsements with the
influencers and their audiences.
Influencer campaigns allow even the smallest of companies
to create viral campaigns. Influencer marketing
through social media can now be used as a low cost tool
that can increase brand awareness and reputation on a
global scale.
Influencers are chosen by engagement ratings. It is
important to note that a bigger following does not always
mean a better influencer. Brands look for influencers that
receive genuine likes and comments from their audience.
Choosing genuine influencers is key to an influencer
campaign because his or her actions will represent the
brand being promoted. Influencers can get easily blacklisted
from campaigns for buying followers, likes, or using
a like-for-like schemes. Organic growth is important to
brands and influencers because of the importance a modern
consumer puts on online reputation and genuineness.
Featured above: Richmond student and influencer
Guya Ghedini